Policy adminstration

MAYFIELD VILLAGE, Ohio--The Progressive group of companies, the third largest auto insurance group in the country based on premiums written, today announced the debut of its newest Web site, driveinsurance.com, highlighting the important role that independent agents and brokers play in Progressive's business model.

PEARL RIVER, NY--ACORD was presented with the prestigious Innovation of the Year Award at the 2004 Insurance Day Awards in London on December 1. ACORD President and CEO, Gregory A. Maciag, accepted the award on behalf of ACORD's more than 480 members worldwide.

HARTFORD, Conn.--The paper application for Builders Risk coverage has gone the way of the thatched roof, replaced by electronic application submission, rating, quoting and binding from The

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Grange Insurance is introducing a new extranet Web site for its independent insurance agents featuring technology to streamline business processes. The site also offers comprehensive functionality that helps agents manage the sales process and their Grange policies. The new Web site, http://www.grangeagent.com , is being rolled out to Grange's 1,200 independent agencies.

PALO ALTO, CALIF--Corporate America's information architecture is replete with obsolete, redundant and unused software applications--so many, in fact, that maintaining them drains tens of billions of dollars per year from the most information-intensive companies alone. However, nearly three quarters of these companies have no process in place for retiring outmoded software and less than half conduct regular software audits to see how much software is on the network.

BOCA RATON--The LexisNexis RiskWise Rate Evasion Evaluation service helps insurance providers prevent application and premium fraud using sophisticated models powered by public records data.

ALPHARETTA, Ga.--ChoicePoint today announced its acquisition of Priority Data Systems, based in Omaha, Neb., a provider of comparative rating software solutions to the independent insurance agency market. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

When insurance underwriting cycles turn sour, as they inevitably do, industry experts are quick to criticize the industry for not following strict underwriting guidelines. The easiest solution for insurers to turn a "soft" market around is to raise premium rates, but some carriers, such as Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., are revamping their underwriting systems to improve underwriting consistency and discipline.As part of a broad initiative that includes reorganizing its field force of independent agents and developing an enterprisewide approach to IT systems to support a cohesive distribution strategy, the Novato, Calif.-based carrier will implement the Accenture Underwriting Components Solution. The Web-based platform uses diagnostics and rules-based technology to help improve underwriting efficiencies.

Each year, insurers identify the flexible, non-proprietary and enterprisewide benefits of Web services, although insurers continue to cite three prevailing reasons to table e-services investments for another day. These reasons include reliance on multiple legacy system operating environments, security issues and overall costs.In a survey of 132 property/casualty insurers conducted in October, Troy, N.Y.-based MapInfo Inc., a global provider of location-based geo-spatial software solutions, determined that there's been increased adoption of Web services and integration technology. The survey was largely targeted to IT managers and senior-level executives.

The Chubb Group of Cos. is making processing E&O insurance coverage easier for agents with an intuitive, customized Web-based solution that's proving to be a smart investment.Providers of errors and omissions (E&O) insurance coverage market the product knowing that corporations are eternally liable for their mistakes and oversights.

Until recently, grid computing was the domain of high-performance computing sites that calculate petabytes of data for particle physics problems or modeled engineering simulations. Now, grid computing is going mainstream, opening up new possibilities for carriers looking to support their growing application portfolios while keeping a lid on information technology budgets.By distributing processing workloads across networks of already existing computers, companies can attain higher performance processing power for relatively little additional investment.

Cedar Rapids--Fiserv Insurance Solutions, a unit of Fiserv, Inc. and an innovative solutions provider for the insurance industry, announced availability of the 1.2 version of Fiserv Advanced Billing, a Web-based system utilizing the J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) platform.

NEW YORK-- A poll of attendees at The Conference Group's 16th Annual Executive Conference for the Property-Casualty Industry has found that executives expect changes in the brokerage and regulatory models to have fundamental and long-lasting effects on the industry, including downward pressure on industry compensation, with pricing likely to increase.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--Computer Sciences Corporation

BOSTON--Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) has purchased the Interwoven Enterprise Web Change Management solution, powered by Interwoven OpenDeploy, to enable faster, accurate and cost-effective synchronization of a disaster recovery site for its member and provider Websites. BCBSMA also purchased the Interwoven Self-Service solution to maintain fresh, personalized content on its Provider Portal.

PORTSMOUTH, NH--Bottomline Technologies today announced the expansion of the company's financial Business Process Management (fBPM) solutions. These fBPM solutions are designed to streamline paper-driven order-to-cash and purchase-to pay processes -- enabling organizations to more effectively manage their financial assets and trading partner relationships.

Newark, Calif.--Risk Management Solutions (RMS), the world's leading provider of products and services for the management of catastrophe risk, today announced that it provided the risk analysis for a securitization of U.S. hurricane and earthquake risk by The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.

Seattle--Safeco announced it is once again expanding the product breadth available on its single-platform online sales center Safeco Now. In a breakthrough move for small-business insurance sales, the company has introduced functionality allowing independent distributors to quote and issue commercial multi-peril (CMP) policies in as little as five minutes.

One problem facing insurers who write commercial automobile coverage is that in states with mandatory auto liability reporting, also known as ALIR, carriers must report policy changes and cancellations electronically to state Dept. of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

Rating agency Standard & Poor's Corp. has identified four insurers that it believes distorted their financial statements by using "financial risk reinsurance." In a report released Nov. 16, S&P claims that the financial results of Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co., Argonaut Group Inc., CNA Financial Corp. and Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. were "materially distorted in an accounting context that contrasts with Standard & Poor's perception of the true economics of the transactions."